Monday, May 4, 2009

Romney’s quip reflects the deep unease among many in the GOP establishment about the continued high-profile of Limbaugh and especially Palin. There is almost a sense of exasperation among many party elites over the media coverage the two polarizing figures get – attention which, in Palin’s case, is widely seen as a product largely of her good looks and tabloid-fodder family troubles.

“She’s bigger in the media than in reality,” lamented GOP consultant Mike Murphy, a longtime friend and adviser to John McCain.

I am not a Romney cheerleader because he was, to me, one of the biggest phony’s out there during 2008, but he has a point.

Palin was praised for her gut wrenching diatribe of Barack Obama during the Republican Convention, in other words, she carried the water that John McCain refused to. She got points, but it was the unraveling of Palin, herself that was her worst nightmare.

There is no doubt that Palin appeared dumber than a box of rocks during the Katie Couric interview. One can say that Couric spewed gotcha questions, when in reality she did not, since when is asking a political candidate what type of materials you read on a daily basis a gotcha question? That was Palin's downfall, right then. The vote was held out on her because no one knew who she was, but the minute she opened her mouth, many felt we don't need THAT in the White House.

So, now the GOP is on a listening tour, asking Americans questions about their lives and the difficulties of the day to day challenges. I am glad they are finally doing this, but is it too late? The main problem is that the GOP has wrapped their whole existence to social issues, which in reality the public has rebuked. The public does not want government to tell us who to marry, if we should have a child, litmus tests for our being. These are none of your damn business questions for many Americans, which the GOP did not get until their party went down in flames in 2008.

Mitt Romney has his own can of worms within his party and if he ever wants the nomination he needs to edit to the left and middle. Meaning let the religious right wing of his party go and talk to moderates and independents. Let's face it, the religious right wing of the Republican Party will never nominate Romney, they don't trust him or his religion, which is the problem here.

And Sarah Palin? My take is this, she came to the lower 48, has never been to most of America, found it fascinating and she loved it. It was hard going back to Alaska, for her, which seems mundane after the glitz and glam of everywhere else. She is striving to maintain and remain relevant in a party from Alaska, but that is a hard task. She, as Romney, have major challenges, one is to smarten her image up. That Couric interview labeled her dumber than a box of rocks. She had the challenge to bring women and independents in the fold, but ran them off to Obama with her rhetoric and lack of knowledge. She has a lot of work to do, meaning she needs to learn to talk mainstream and not extreme. That is her challenge.

The GOP has a lot of work to do, they acknowledges this and knows it. National elections are won in the middle, not from your own party. If you cannot win moderates and independents, no matter which party, you will lose. As long as the GOP is galvanized by the Limbaughs of their own party and don't have the strength to take it back, they will continue to roam in the wilderness for a very long time.

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